In the case of Murdoch and Brexit, I think it's a Pyrrhic victory, at best. Big chunks of his (and other media tycoons) core audiences are flocking to the social media echo chambers, diminishing their profits and there's no end of that in sight. But, those social echo chambers are even worse, bc they get unchecked mainly due to financial interests of the likes of Zuckerberg.

I concede though, the Murdochs of the world are far from finished, yet losing influence by the minute and now look like the zombies they ever were.

the power of social media vs trad media is definitely an interesting issue, but it seems incredibly difficult to get anywhere near the truth on that one. probably no-one has much of an idea right at the moment as to their relative influences. are there many individual social media bubbles that get a consistent editorial line (well, allegedly consistent...)anywhere near the reach of the Sun/Mail (thinking of the UK)?

the power of social media vs trad media is definitely an interesting issue, but it seems incredibly difficult to get anywhere near the truth on that one. probably no-one has much of an idea right at the moment as to their relative influences. are there many individual social media bubbles that get a consistent editorial line (well, allegedly consistent...)anywhere near the reach of the Sun/Mail (thinking of the UK)?

Murdoch bought myspace but ruined it, didn't he?

The tabloids and things like Fox still reach far more people, that's true, but it apparently just takes a considerable amount of people who form those social media echo chambers who are not reachable any more via other ways and will vote for the populists.

In Germany as well as Austria the last two, three years have seen the massive rise of this phenomenon and it'S usually the populists profiting from this - wrong stories (for example on refugee related crime and such) get viral extremely quickly, if they get disproven people dont't believe the facts - Afd or in Austria the Freedom party has the most followers/likes. Those people have created a whole "alternative" media system without the checks of traditional media (be it due to laws, code of decency and so on)

A question for anyone in the "Fascism is just capitalism on steroids" camp:

Leaving aside the early history of (Italian) Fascism and National Socialism, and looking at just at how the word's been used post-1945 up to the present, surely it has to be accepted that Fascism of any period is nothing without nationalism? Now there has very obviously been a huge resurgence in nationalism in many countries over the last few years, culminating in this year's dismal events in the UK and USA as well as a wave of nationalist populism across Europe. But as vimothy (mainly) has described elsewhere, the primary attitude of late capitalism/neoliberalism towards the nation-state is that it is not much more than an annoying impediment to the free flow of money, goods and labour, or that at best, it's something for the proles to hang the remains of their cultural identity onto, while globalization leads to an ineluctable homogenization of culture, until it's as easy to find dim sum in Rome and pizza in Shanghai as vice-versa.

I would argue that nationalism is much more important to the definition of Fascism that capitalism is. The Strasserist tendency within Nazism was genuinely national-socialist, in that it was both nationalistic (obviously) and socialistic (but not Marxist, of course). And there's a National Bolshevist movement in Russia, for fucks's sake. Are they Fascist, too? It's hard to say.

Bernie Sanders takes a similar view, incidentally. Here he is being interviewed by an incredulous Ezra Klein:

Ezra Klein
You said being a democratic socialist means a more international view. I think if you take global poverty that seriously, it leads you to conclusions that in the US are considered out of political bounds. Things like sharply raising the level of immigration we permit, even up to a level of open borders. About sharply increasing ...

Bernie Sanders
Open borders? No, that's a Koch brothers proposal.

Ezra Klein
Really?

Bernie Sanders
Of course. That's a right-wing proposal, which says essentially there is no United States. ...

Ezra Klein
But it would make ...

Bernie Sanders
Excuse me ...

Ezra Klein
It would make a lot of global poor richer, wouldn't it?

Bernie Sanders
It would make everybody in America poorer —you're doing away with the concept of a nation state, and I don't think there's any country in the world that believes in that. If you believe in a nation state or in a country called the United States or UK or Denmark or any other country, you have an obligation in my view to do everything we can to help poor people. What right-wing people in this country would love is an open-border policy. Bring in all kinds of people, work for $2 or $3 an hour, that would be great for them. I don't believe in that.

A question for anyone in the "Fascism is just capitalism on steroids" camp:

Leaving aside the early history of (Italian) Fascism and National Socialism, and looking at just at how the word's been used post-1945 up to the present, surely it has to be accepted that Fascism of any period is nothing without nationalism? Now there has very obviously been a huge resurgence in nationalism in many countries over the last few years, culminating in this year's dismal events in the UK and USA as well as a wave of nationalist populism across Europe. But as vimothy (mainly) has described elsewhere, the primary attitude of late capitalism/neoliberalism towards the nation-state is that it is not much more than an annoying impediment to the free flow and goods and labour, or that at best, it's something for the proles to hang the remains of their cultural identity onto, while globalization leads to an ineluctable homogenization of culture, until it's as easy to find dim sum in Rome and pizza in Shanghai as vice-versa.

Quick answer - the attitude of neoliberalism towards the state is not as you suggest at all. For example, neoliberalism has depended upon the state for its own continued existence, as after the phenomenal bailouts - and that was not happenstance, it's all part of the systemic logic of neoliberalism, that it can run wild with the knowledge that its monumental gambles will be insured against. Neoliberalism relies upon the state to bar the kind of movement it doesn't want - its championing of free flow of goods and labour is only ever on its own terms, the rest is simply propaganda. And as described many times, proponents of free markets only ever like free markets because it will disadavantage their (less advanced) competitors and overrun their incipient industries - America or any other major power obviously isn't built on free markets, but protectionism. It's totally pragamatic, and barely an ideology in any real sense - which is why I have sympathy with some who question whether 'neoliberalism' has much meaning at all (not to say I agree with them - I would certainly say it describes a wide range of related ideas in late capitalism, though not a v coherent/consistent ideology in the way that I understand ideology)

Ha-Joon Chang is pretty readable on all this stuff.

Btw, obvs agreed on the link between fascism (as popularly understood now) and nationalism; although as said above, the propaganda of fascism and the actual structural change a fascist state might/might not bring about in the 21st century, are v different things (and pretty open to speculation at this stage, without a whole lot of evidence - and hopefully it will stay that way).

Hmm, excellent point about the bank bailouts. And it's certainly true that "free trade" or the "free market" is a complete chimera.

I agree that neoliberalism isn't coherent/consistent, but you can say much the same thing about Fascism. I would say neoliberalism in itself is not really an ideology, more just an economic system, but that the conviction that it's the best or only way to run an economy constitutes an ideology of sorts.

Originally Posted by droid

Precisely. The aim of neo-liberalism is not to destroy the nation state, but to hollow it out so it solely serves market interests.

OK, so the nation-state is not destroyed wholesale but reduced to a sort of life support system for big business.

Edit: still, that's very different from nationalism, which aims to preserve and reinvigorate the cultural/religious/ethnic unity that nations were (once upon a time) defined by.

But wasn't that unity of nations always just a narrative used to serve other ends anyways (imagined communities and all that)? In a way neoliberalism needs nationalist propaganda more than previous versions of capitalism, precisely because of the nation's hollowing out in reality. Fervent protestations that the nation is a real thing.

In terms of 21stC fascism and how its particular form of nationalist propaganda will play out, I think it's difficult to tell at this stage. And of course Marine Le Pen is very different from Donald Trump.
As a side point, it is interesting how much of the press wants to ascribe a clear, consistent ideological outlook to people like Le Pen and Trump. Seems like the political version of the intentional fallacy to me - these people are fucking mad, proper batshit crazy (whatever their technical skills in manipulation of the public) . As if to say, "if we can only understand the logic in what they're saying, then maybe we can somehow come to fight it or accept it"

But wasn't that unity of nations always just a narrative used to serve other ends anyways (imagined communities and all that)?

As vim intimates, it depends on what you mean by a 'nation', a 'state' and a 'nation-state'. I'm sure being a Jute or a Pict or whatever really meant something to people in the days when they defined themselves as such, but that's many centuries before the rise of the nation-state in modern terms. And many of the indigenous ethnic groups in North America regard themselves as 'nations', although of course that's just an English translation of their own words.

Kings and governments may have encouraged a sense of nationhood when it suited their purposes (being at war with a foreign power, most obviously), but I think it's probable they were tapping into something that existed independently of that. It's a nice idea to think that people wouldn't have a concept of nationality were it not for the pernicious influence of self-serving elites, but that strikes me as a bit of socialist romanticism. (Although of course you could be saying the opposite, i.e. in the absence of central authority at a national level, we'd naturally exist in a situation of more or less constant micro-level mutual strife, clan against clan and village against village, which sounds like a fair description of life in a lot of present-day hunter-gatherer and pastoralist societies, actually.)

Originally Posted by baboon2004

Seems like the political version of the intentional fallacy to me - these people are fucking mad, proper batshit crazy (whatever their technical skills in manipulation of the public) . As if to say, "if we can only understand the logic in what they're saying, then maybe we can somehow come to fight it or accept it"

I think looking for consistency in Fascism is a fool's errand, really. Italian Fascism grew in large part out of Futurism, which fetishized technology, industry and urbanism and scorned everything that was old-fashioned, slow, traditional and rustic. National Socialism grew out of a reactionary ecological cult which despised cities, intellectualism, industry and capitalism and valued 'traditional' country living, pre-Christian nature worship, handicrafts and organic food. And yet the Fascists co-opted the symbolism of ancient Rome and consciously set about ordering Fascist society as a modern-day reincarnation of the Roman Empire, while the Nazis became technologists par excellence because Panzers and Messerschmidts are superior weapons to swords and spears.

Bernie Sanders takes a similar view, incidentally. Here he is being interviewed by an incredulous Ezra Klein:

There was a time — I think under Roosevelt, maybe even under Truman — where it was perceived that working people were part of the Democratic Party. I think for a variety of reasons, a lot having to do with money and politics, that is no longer the case.